Coconut Island. Moku o Lo'e


One of my profs invited students to attend a lecture on China from someone who’d just been there.  This was a big deal as trade had been re-established with China after a 25-year hiatus and Americans were now allowed travel.  Nixon went to China in 1976 on his elder statesman redemption tour and although he couldn’t dodge the taint of Watergate, he did reestablish trade with China.  Two things I remember about the lecturer’s trip:  

1.   They’d noticed there were no flies buzzing around the farm animals at any of the farms they’d visited.  Remarking on that they were told that the flies were all eliminated.  By hand.  

2.   Exceedingly few elementary age kids wore glasses at the schools they’d visited.  They learned eye exercises were added to school daily exercise routines some years back and it resulted in 20/20 vision for the majority.

I was seated next to a woman, late in pregnancy to the point she used her baby bump as a shelf for her coffee cup.  I glanced her way just in time to see a perfectly formed foot materialize from her massive belly and kick the cup.  She and I made eye contact then broke out laughing. I’d never seen anything like that. This was decades before the “Alien” movie but I think I figured out how the idea came about. 

I took Oceanography 101 figuring what better place than here.  Part of the coursework included a field trip to the marine research facility on Moku o Lo’e, (Coconut Island) an island in Kaneohe Bay.  The island was home to wild guava and lantana since colonization until Chris Holmes II*, a WWI war hero and Fleischmann yeast heir with a fortune to burn, bought the island in 1934.  He built a posh residence, fish ponds, and a private zoo. The island was a R&R station for Navy flyers during WWII, and afterwards developed into a private resort. Half the island was donated to UH 1948 for a marine research facility.  

So off I went on a boat trip to Coconut Island with a hundred or so first-year  college students…  

Oh yeah.  The lab was tour was interesting.  


That is Moku o Lo’e in the opening footage of Gilligan’s Island

 

*The great-grandfather of Elizabeth Holmes, fraud-convicted founder of failed Theranos.


Note:  The island is now completely owned by the state and is the facility for the HawaiÊ»i Institute of Marine Biology, part of the University of HawaiÊ»i.

  


 

 


 


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